Guild Wars Review: Factions

Guild Wars Factions is an MMORPG developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. It is the second game in the Guild Wars series. Factions introduces the Asian-styled continent of “Cantha” where two warring factions, the Luxons and the Kurzicks, are locked in a fierce war. Players are able to join in this conflict, assisting their chosen faction in claiming towns in the game world.

A new land, a new story

For those who are not familiar with Guild Wars:

Guild Wars is a different kind of MMORPG, most of the game is instanced which means that you get your own copy of the map and only you and your party members can play in. Only towns and outposts are non-instanced, online like the normal MMORPG.

That said, Guild Wars offers gameplay more like a normal RPG instead of grinding to level up to the max level you follow a storyline. The storyline has several Co-op missions that you have to face in order to progress.

PvP is on several maps and on several modes capture the flag for one example.

Cantha, a Asian styled land with its own story

During character creation you have two options to choose a ”Role-playing character” or “PvP character”. The first one lets you access the storyline and all of the PvE content within the game. The second option lets you create a PvP character one that is Instant the max level which in Guild Wars is twenty and with a few skills. There are eight classes in Guild wars Factions in total. First, there are six from the original Guild Wars and in the Factions campaign, two classes were added:

First there is the Warrior. Instead of the normal warrior, serving a role as a tank. Warriors in Guild Wars focus on dealing damage. The Ranger is a long-range combat specialist, they can have pets too. Next, Monk is a spell casting profession, which focuses on healing, and defensive spells. Elementalist allows you to cast spells, and focuses on the elements for their attacks. A Necromancer casts spells which are specialized in bringing the dead back to life. Finally, the Mesmer has the power to bring illusion and trickery to their enemies.

And the two new classes included in factions are the Assassin, a fast dagger wielding assassination specialist, good in stealth assassinations and able to do various combo’s; and the Ritualist, a living conduit to the spirit world, who can summon spirits to protect allies or attack enemies. They can summon ghost weapons for their allies to wield and connect with the power of their ancestors by doing rituals with ashes and urns.

Roleplaying in Cantha

About the PvE content of the game.

When you start with your role-playing character you start off with a short tutorial just to learn how to play the game, after that you can access the first town, there you can start quests and learn more about the story. You get to find out that the plague is spreading over Cantha and you learn about the history of that land and so you will get yourself in a rather interesting story. That will progress more during the co-op missions.

Quests are different from most MMORPG’s because outside the towns where everything is instanced, an NPC will often accompany you, or guide you through the quest. I haven’t noticed any real “grinding” quests. Sometimes you are supposed to collect a certain item, but you get them in just a few kills.

Co-op missions, in these missions you have to complete several tasks and objectives that are part of the storyline. These are repeatable at any time.

In town you can equip your skills eight being the maximum that you can equip, and get a party or some henchman(NPCs that you can party with). You can also learn skills, buy equipment, craft equipment in town like most MMORPGs.

Combat is done nicely, it is fun to play. I really like the combat in Guild Wars. Move with WASD or with the mouse the choice is up to you. Further most of the mechanics are like your normal MMORPG.

Player versus Player

PVP in Guild Wars is fun, but it feels more like you’re playing a room based game than a real MMORPG. Several maps and several modes are available. It works out great, its balanced and its fun.

The Looks and Sound of Guild Wars Factions

The graphics are good, overall the game runs great. Skills have nice animations and everything looks all right. Only thing that I don’t like is that cut scene’s look a lot worse than the game itself The music is good and really fits the style of Cantha. Cut scene’s have very poor voice acting, other than that the sound is fine.

Conclusion

Guild Wars factions is a nice addition to the Guild Wars family, the game plays pretty good and is more story driven than most MMORPGs out there. The game is almost fully instanced, Co-op missions are fun to do and quests are different from most other MMORPGs. The PvP is good but feels more like you are playing a room based game rather than an MMORPG. Several maps and several modes are available. I liked it at first but after a while playing it, I found it to be just a bit boring.